Jimmy the robot, Trossen, Intel and Darwin OP, what am I missing?

So I attended a talk today, and some guys from Intel promoting the Edison platform were there and spoke a bit about edison, Jimmy ($16000 version) and the expected consumer version ($1600) development platforms. It looks like Jimmy(expensive) is exactly the same as Darwin OP, but a bit bigger with bigger motors, and an intel board driving the cm-730 board. Is that the only difference? I dont see whats so innovative about that since Darwin has been around for a while. What am I missing here?

If thats the case will the consumer (cheap version) be a darwin mini clone with an intel edison driving it? Just trying to wrap my head around all of this.

Re: Jimmy the robot, Trossen, Intel and Darwin OP, what am I missing?

10" taller, bigger battery (4S 4Ah LiPo vs 3S 1.1Ah LiPo), bigger space for the PC (and future upgradeable? darwin-op cannot be upgraded without redesign of torso), slightly more human proportions(?), but the code is still largely based on the DARwIn-OP framework (tweaked a bit with new interfaces to it being developed). The head should also have plenty of space for additional sensors, actuators, and/or lightweight processor boards, which should help with the stated goal of making something new and highly interactive.

As-is, it is less revolutionary than the NimbRo-OP (new version 3D printed by igus) with its new (10+ months old) ros-based control and gait system. The only really new thing I've seen about Jimmy is the support from Intel, which could afford to dump a lot more resources into developing something than Robotis or any university lab.

Re: Jimmy the robot, Trossen, Intel and Darwin OP, what am I missing?

So I saw both flavors of Jimmy at the Intel conference.... They are supposedly open source, but I have yet to see anywhere to go to find the open source files. Is there a date on where/when the info on these items will be released to the public? I know the Trossen guys are still working out the details on Jimmy Jr after speaking with them, but big jimmy?

Re: Jimmy the robot, Trossen, Intel and Darwin OP, what am I missing?

Originally Posted by wthierry

So I saw both flavors of Jimmy at the Intel conference.... They are supposedly open source, but I have yet to see anywhere to go to find the open source files. Is there a date on where/when the info on these items will be released to the public? I know the Trossen guys are still working out the details on Jimmy Jr after speaking with them, but big jimmy?

We are working on wrapping up the finalized drops of code, finalized 3D files, and tutorials/documentation as we speak. For the research variant, I've been sending out invites to our 21stCentury Robot Collective group on Github on a per-case basis, and providing the source files for the models upon request (with the disclaimer that they are subject to quite a bit of change before final release).

One thing to keep in mind is that until the last 2-3 months or so, most of this project has been shouldered by me entirely, and 90% of my time has been spent in development of the actual physical hardware platforms and preparing them for manufacturing. Scaling up to a 70cm tall platform with a NUC, and then scaling down to something lightweight enough to be propelled by AX-12s is no small task. A considerable amount of R&D went into developing an Edison Robotics Carrier board and a truly open-source replacement to the CM-730, the Arbotix-PRO. Only in the last 2-3 months have we started to make a push on the software side of things. The majority of the time has been invested in developing/refining both the large research humanoid as well as the AX-12 based humanoid. While the current state may not seem hugely innovative, these things take time.

Tician said it well, having active funding to actually pick up the Darwin-OP code base and expand upon it is probably one of the bigger aspects of this project. It's largely stayed the same since its release 3 years ago. We have a working node.js API implemented that communicates via socket server over Wifi quite well, and are working on several demo applications that will run cross-platform (Android, iPhone, Chrome Browser, Linux, etc). The Darwin-OP codebase is great, but it lacks a good amount of documentation, code comments, and more advanced demos... not to mention it is fairly complex and essentially calls for a graduate level understanding of computer science. We were fortunate enough that Farrell Robotics donated much of their work on it to assist with the project. The higher-level API will open it up and make it MUCH more accessible to a lot more people, which is one of the primary goals of the project.

Beyond that, I can tell you that we are partnered with Intel's perceptual computing group to work on integration of their new Realsense 3D depth camera, which looks to be quite a competitor to the Kinect. We also have a parallel development project with USC & Olin College, which has already produced pretty significant progress towards a full ROS integration of the robots.

All I can say, is there will be a lot more being unveiled and released over the next 6 months. We are in no rush to release unfinished/untested code or models, and have no obligation to publicly release the project source before it is ready for public consumption. At 9 months old, it's a project still very much so in it's infancy.

Edit: It's also probably worth pointing out that while much of the focus has been on "Jimmy", he is just one of the 'character models' that 21st Century Robots has created, and was the first and therefore the flagship of the 21C Project. The kits that we sell are actually going to be sold as bare endoskeletons (the research variants have an option of coming with pre-installed shells). The HR-OS1 Humanoid Endoskeleton is the AX-12/Edison powered model, and the HR-OS5 Humanoid Endoskeleton is our MX-106/core-i5 powered research model (product page updates inc).

Re: Jimmy the robot, Trossen, Intel and Darwin OP, what am I missing?

Super Like to Tyberius & every team member of this project .
One question here how do you plan to have custom gaits for the robo?
Let someone want to introduce a new custom gait, do you have any plan to provide a simulator (like robo plus motion editor etc) to create the gait by hand or by changing the 3D model of the robo? Or what is the idea?